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Uncut Funk

 Oh wow oh wow, this is by far my favorite reading of this semester (in this class but also I think out of all my classes!) and I am very much looking forward to discussing more in class. Towards the end of our reading for this week, hooks and Hall are discussing desire, reproduction, (the art of) dying, and aesthetics (of existence). This dialogue arose from a conversation about text, writing and content/form. In an argument for progressive transformation hooks emphasizes eroticization, play, and pleasure. hooks says “Our imagination is where out strength to resist lies” (46). How do we play with form within our own every day work within the academy and incorporate play and pleasure? Can we? Or do we, like hooks, need to exist inside and outside of it to do so? 


Masculinity was also a central topic of the dialogue we read so far. In one of my GWSS classes at Nova we had a week on masculinity studies, reading Brod’s “The Case for Men’s Studies” and Reeser’s Intro of Masculinities in Theory. Honestly at the time I may have been, in fact, resistant to it. Alas in the spirit of Hall’s own self-reflexivity, I think I was wrong to be so originally dismissive and not have given that dismissal much thought until now. Does masculinity studies need a more prominent role? Would/should that be separate of GWSS?  

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